CHAPTER 9 • Using WordPress As a CMS 237
Although the WordPress.org website and the WordPress.tv screencast fest may be helpful
references for your users, you’re probably better off creating a small how-to guide to explain
how WordPress works. This is especially important if you’re using WordPress as a CMS for a
static website rather than blogging; if you point your users of such websites to the Codex,
they’ll just be confused.
If you’re a WordPress developer and/or designer and you do a lot of WordPress sites, I advise
you to put together a starter kit that describes the most common tasks of the day-to-day
usage. This kit, which can be anything from a simple document to a printable booklet, should
be easily updated as new versions of WordPress come along. It should also be constructed in
such a manner that you can add to it whatever custom functionality is used for the client sites.
Maybe you have a category for video that acts differently from the other ones, or perhaps
there’s the ever-present issue with custom fields and their usability. Add plugin usage, widgets,
and possible settings that you’ve devised for your client, and you can save yourself a lot of
questions if you deliver a simple “Getting Started” manual with your design.
A FINAL WORD ON USING WORDPRESS AS A CMS
It is a common misconception that WordPress isn’t a fitting choice as a CMS solution for
various projects. Obviously, it is not always the perfect choice — no publishing platform will
ever be — but the ease with which you can roll out a site with WordPress is a strong factor in
its favor. Add a simple user interface and great expandability thanks to plugins and themes,
and you’ve got a fairly solid case right there.
One of the pros that comes with using WordPress as a CMS is how well it is equipped for
search engines. With nicely written code and perhaps with the help of a plugin or two, you’ll
have no trouble ranking in the search engines, assuming that you’ve got the proper content for
it, of course. That, alongside the social web, is how a lot of traffic is driven these days. So the
next chapter, “Integrating the Social Web,” shows you how you can integrate the social web
into your WordPress sites.